[belviewreview]

A couple of questions.

(1) can you point to some large important positive uses of Bitcoin at present, or are you just saying that at some point in the future we will see them?

(2) are you saying all the bad things like Ponzi scams, hacking, drug money monitoring, buying csam and ransomware, have stopped, or that at some point in the future they will?

[littlecranky67]

> (1) can you point to some large important positive uses of Bitcoin at present

No, not at present - but there will be in the future. Bitcoin is faily new, hard to understand for laymen, and government regulation and the existing financial industry is actively fighting it (with some extend changing in the US right now). The properties bitcoin has allow for lots of benefits and use cases that are superior to our existing financial systems, but they depent on adoption. I am bullish on the bitcoin, the same way I was bullish on the internet in 1994. The internet is great, but not so great if only a couple of thousand people in the world use it. That is the same adoption problem, not an issue with the underlying technology.

> (2) are you saying all the bad things

All the bad things existed before bitcoin, and will exist for eternity. The internet in the early 90s and 00s was also a place full of scams, ponzi scheme emails, phishing, fraud etc. Most crime money today is fiat cash. Some people (especially in the EU) claim a total surveillance state and the removal of cash paired with total money control is needed for a safe and secure society. I am in team liberal democracy, where the freedom of cash and lack of government total control is a benefit to society, ensures perpetual democracy and freedom to the individual. The fact that bitcoin and crypto is used by criminals just as cash is, shouldn't be a reason to not have it. Just as removing cash to prevent illegal activity should not be goal in a free society.

[belviewreview]

"No, not at present - but there will be in the future" That seems to imply that until that future arrives, people should mostly stay away from cybercurrencies.

I am bringing all this up because when cybercurrencies were getting started, the people boosting them assured us that they would soon be doing all sorts of wonderful things, and nothing bad would happen. That prediction turned out to be wildly mistaken. And instead of considering that maybe the idea itself is just basically bad, in the years since they keep insisting that soon it will all be fixed.

Can you understand why, given this long history, I would be dubious? Or is it your view that I am under some sort of moral obligation to believe that the approaches to fixing it being worked on at present are absolutely certain to work?

[littlecranky67]

> "No, not at present - but there will be in the future" That seems to imply that until that future arrives, people should mostly stay away from cybercurrencies.

No it does not. See my internet analogy. Asume it is the year 1993, and the WWW is just invented but there are hardly any websites. At that time, you wouldn't say that "No, there are not websites at present - but there will be in the future. Until then, stay away from the Internet". This is of course non-sensical. It is: "There is this new technology that will revolutionize everything, better get started with it early and familiarize yourself with it, the earlier the better". And yes, some people thought the internet is just a temporal phenomenon that will pass by and refused to familiarize themselves with it even after the iPhone came along.

Regarding cybercurrencies: I am myself a "bitcoin only" guy - meaining in my opinion there is bitcoin, and there is the all the rest which is shitcoin. Stay away from all the shitcoins.